Hydro Tasmania assures state has energy as fire guts major power station
An investigation is set to begin into the cause of a fire at a power station in Tasmania's Central Highlands overnight.
The Tungatinah station at Tarraleah is one of 10 major stations in the state's hydro-electric scheme.
Emergency services were called to the blaze at about 9:00pm and reported it was contained by the early hours of Thursday morning.
Hydro Tasmania says there were no employees or contractors at the station and no-one was injured.
The extent of damage is yet to be assessed but Hydro says there is no risk to Tasmania's energy supply and that the system "continues to operate securely".
The fire service, Tasmania Police, Hydro and TasNetworks are expected to give an update this morning.
Members of the public are asked to stay away from the site until further notice.
The Lyell Highway will be closed between Victoria Valley Road and Fourteen Mile Road for about 24 hours.
Police say residents will be allowed to access Bradys Lake.
Hyrdro Tasmania says Tungatinah station is the newer of two power stations at Tarraleah and has a generating capacity of 142.2 megawatts.
TasNetworks is reporting outages in surrounding towns, including Tarraleah, Brady's Lake and Bronte Park, listing the cause as a pole fire.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.